Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 [Paperback]

Edwin Brown Firmage (Author), R Collin Mangrum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2001

This title is the Winner of an Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award. The inability of American society to tolerate the peculiar institutions embraced by Mormons was one of the major events in the religious history of nineteenth-century America. "Zion in the Courts" explores one aspect of this collision between the Mormons and the mainstream: the Mormons' efforts to establish their own court system - one appropriate to the distinctive political, social, and economic practices they envisioned as Zion - and the pressures applied by the federal legal system to bring them to heel. This first paperback edition includes two new introductory pieces in which the authors discuss the Mormon emphasis on settling disputes outside the court, a practice that foreshadows current trends toward arbitration and mediation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A major work of scholarship which deserves close attention. -- Church History

Definitive study. . . . An intimate portrayal of the nature of early Mormon communities and doctrines. -- Choice

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (May 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252069803
• ISBN-13: 978-0252069802
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,982,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book, July 18, 2001

By 

Nathan Oman (Cambridge, Massachusetts United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Hardcover)

This is the first, and to date the only, book that attempts to tell the 19th century legal history of the Mormon Church. The book is divided into three parts. The first section basically gives the legal history of the church during the life time of its founder Joseph Smith. The second section details the intensive persecution of the church by the federal government over the practice of plural marriage. The third section describes in detail the ecclesiastical court system that basically served all of the judicial needs of pioneer Mormons. This section in particular is fabulous. Firmage and Mangrum had incredible access to confidential church court records and the detail and scope of their treatment dwarfs any other work on the subject.

However the book is not without flaws. There are some gaps in the research. For example, the landmark Reynolds decision is dicussed in detail, but one gets the impression that the only documents consulted were the published legal ones (opinions and briefs). What about journals and letters by the participants? These sorts of gaps abound.

On the whole, however, this is a wonderful work. Law is one of the hitherto neglected regions of Mormon studies, and Mormon perspectives are among the hitherto neglected possibilities of legal studies. Despite a facinating legal history, Mormon historians have done compartively little on the subject. Likewise, despite Mormons at the highest levels of the legal establishment -- e.g., Rex E. Lee (Solicitor General) or Dallin H. Oaks (Dean of Chicago Law School) -- there have been compartatively few attempts at sustained and scholarly Mormon perspectives on the law. Anyone interested in providing such perspectives should read this book.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Acceptable, but Flawed Analysis, December 21, 2003

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Paperback)

"Zion in the Courts" is a pretty good analysis of the legal issues affecting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1830 to 1990. Both authors are fine scholars and bring a wealth of understanding to the subject. In the process they explore the legal history of the often rocky relationships between Mormons and other Americans. They also offer a discussion of internal Mormon legal actions such as ecclesiastical courts and during the pioneer Utah period, adjudication of water rights in the arid territory.

But Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum fall sway to the Mormon myth of "persecuted innocence." Indeed, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" fail to move beyond the interpretive framework prearranged to lean in a pro-Latter-day Saint direction. While there may be some room for permutations of interpretation, Latter-day Saint leaders have essentially drawn a line in the sand about what may and may not be considered as an interpretive framework and most historians have accepted it (or perhaps have never even considered going beyond it) because of their religious convictions. Those who have ventured too far, notably D. Michael Quinn and Lavina Fielding Anderson, have been excommunicated from the church.

As a result the authors of "Zion in the Courts," despite the book's other very real qualities, assume without any serious discussion the viability and justification of a Mormon theocracy, i.e., Zion. The authors assert that the zionic goal inevitably led to persecution endured by an innocent church through both legal and extralegal means. They wrote that "The story of the persecution Mormons suffered through the institutions of the legal system, and of their efforts to establish their own legal system--one appropriate to Zion... illustrates democracy's potential to oppress an insular, minority community;..." (p. xiv-xv).

The authors apparently believe that theocracy is both possible and desirable, but such a quest for empire mandates by this perspective would always run against the grain of the American mainstream, and legal institutions by definition would oppose it. Far from democracy's "oppression" of a minority, I would suggest, the nation's legal system would assert itself to defend the cherished principles of the Constitution against a perceived threat to liberty from a theocracy bent on taking control. Debate over whether or not liberty was really threatened by Mormon theocracy is moot, but undoubtedly non-Mormons considered the church's secular power a threat to the Constitution. The authors fail to appreciate the inherent tension between democracy and theocracy. They also seem not to appreciate that there might be other equally valid approaches toward Mormonism's zionic quest. For some it represented a spiritual condition where righteousness and justness were partners with goodwill and charity, a position that eschewed the secular, theocratic aspects that always created ill-will between Mormons and other Americans. Unfortunately, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" did not consider criticisms of Mormonism's quest for empire-- criticisms that were coherent, internally consistent, and deserving of serious consideration. They accept at face value the Mormon dialectic. As a result, "Zion in the Courts" represents both the worst and the best of the recent writing on the Mormon past.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History or modern POV, I prefer history, September 22, 2010

By 

Kayanna (Vancouver, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Paperback)

I stopped read these reviews, prior to purchasing this for my father, one of a long line of Mormon lawyers. I read with care the review of Mr. Launius, and his disdainful commentary influencing my choice. When readers assume that their personal, or intellectual or historical point of view needs to trump the history of events, we generally find flawed history. Those books which analyse Mormon History fall prey to these abuses readily. As the subject is not one most readers understand, they are not able to judge fairly between gadflies who attack history based up their personal belief systems. A quick check on Mr. Launius name readily reveals he is not enamoured of conservative, clear and simple history. Nor does he have the legal qualifications to judge this kind of history. Beyond that, the criticisms are based upon arguments that do not stand up well to scrutiny. Those people who claimed they felt "fear" in the presence of Mormons, to the extent that the slaughtered them, or in the case of the Governor of Missouri, issued an extinction order against them, did everything possible not just to scare them out of the Western fringe of America, they forced them into that long Pilgrimage to Utah when so many died. It's pretentious at the least to claim that a people who fled, many of the dead of winter, their prophet slaughtered, the government against them, were in any way able to threaten the power structure of the time. As the notes to the book mention, church courts only covered spiritual matters; the law of the land covered everyone else as equally as possible. If one does the research or reads the history of the time, one finds that despite all the negative press, Mormon were some of the first to vote, were highly respected by Susan B. Anthony and her cohort, and even hidden away in the desert of Utah were forming a more equal society, with few poor or needy among them. There is a reason this religion is still growing so quickly today.

On the basis of these principles, and the writers knowledge of the era covered, I expect my father to enjoy it greatly.I will update this as I read it myself.